Biden should fire all White House interns over anonymous pro-Hamas letter

OPINION:

People who avoid accountability say the darnedest things.

In an open letter to President Biden, a group of more than 40 leftists portrayed Israel as a bloodthirsty aggressor while offering only passing condemnation of Hamas for its horrific assault on Israeli civilians on Oct. 7.

Siding with the Hamas terrorists, they demanded a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, blasted the “ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people” and called for ending the “illegal occupation and the Israeli apartheid.”

They threw some heated words around, but they left out a few — like their names.

The authors didn’t explain why they chose to be anonymous, but it was probably because they feared their employer’s reaction. And maybe that their words could haunt their careers.

You see, their current boss is the president of the United States because they’re all self-described interns in the White House and the Executive Office of the President. They all “undersigned” the letter, according to the text of it, as reported by NBC News.

Except no one undersigned anything because no names are on it.

The letter could have been written by one person, a hundred, or a thousand. It could have been produced by an artificial intelligence program for all we know. Based on the cliched language used, maybe it was.

The alleged authors claimed to represent various races, ethnicities, religions and sexual identities, because they couldn’t leave that out. (They even used the word “Latine,” which is another leftist attempt, after the failure of “Latinx,” to eliminate the words “Latino” and “Latina” as too gender-conforming.)

“We are not the decision makers of today, but we aspire to be the leaders of tomorrow,” they wrote, while demonstrating that they don’t deserve responsibility at all. First, they contradicted their boss and undermined his policy choices in public, which is not how professionals behave. And second, they did it anonymously, which means they’re too cowardly to stand by their professed principles out in the open.

They included a threat — “we will never forget how the pleas of the American people have been heard and thus far, ignored” — though they didn’t specify any potential consequences.

Would you hire a person who talks to the boss like this?

How ironic for people, normally so concerned with personal identity, to be unwilling to put their names proudly alongside their rhetoric. They want us to pay attention to their feelings, just not who is feeling them.

Why, it’s almost as if their position is antisemitic and indefensible and they know it.

We’ve seen what a cease-fire is to Hamas, as the terrorist group claimed responsibility for a shooting at a bus stop in Jerusalem that killed at least three people and injured 16 more while fighting was supposedly paused for prisoner exchanges.

And if the interns meant they want to go back to what it was like on Oct. 6, then they don’t know what the word cease-fire means at all. That was when Hamas would periodically launch rockets into Israel, while the Israelis were expected to just sit and take it.

These White House interns are a privileged group, many coming from prominent families that donate heavily to the Democratic Party and many attending top universities. Maybe their decidedly pro-Hamas stance was encouraged at school, considering the congressional testimony we saw this week from the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT.

The leaders of those fine institutions were unable to say if advocating the murder of Jews represents a breach of their respective schools’ code of conduct. And that raises the question of who was ever going to tell these interns, these pinheaded leftists, that their pro-terrorist ideas might be wrong.

By refusing to sign their names, they’ve shown they’re not accustomed to encountering opposing arguments and are unwilling or unable to defend their beliefs. What they’ve done, figuratively, is throw a spitball at the teacher and put their heads down before he can turn around. And because they’ve hidden themselves among the interns who were not involved, they’ve proved they’re willing to put their colleagues at risk as well.

This is just like other nameless grievances filed by Capitol Hill staffers, political appointees and college student groups, and it’s just as ludicrous.

These interns might work in the White House, but someone has neglected to tell them that they haven’t been elected to a blessed thing.

Make no mistake: Anonymous political commentary has a long and proud history in this country. But just because these White House kids have the right to be anonymous doesn’t mean they are entitled to be insubordinate.

People may say, “Oh, they’re just college kids,” but it’s more than that. It’s the left thinking they can push Mr. Biden around. And if he doesn’t fire every last intern to send a message, you’ll know they’re right.

• Tim Murtaugh is a Washington Times columnist, founder and principal of Line Drive Public Affairs LLC, and co-host of the “Line Drive Podcast.”